Kept you waiting, huh?

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delays with page 5 of Toriel's Heat! I've been having a tough time with my mental health over the past couple weeks, and I needed to take my foot off the gas for bit to recuperate!

I don't like letting my personal issues bleed over into my art, but I felt like I owe an explanation for the delays! As you all know, I work a full time job, 12 hour weekend nighshifts at my local steel processing factory. (Thursday to Sunday) I don't particularly enjoy this work, but it pays the bills, a reality I'm sure lots of you can relate too. After all, I can't draw if I don't have a place to live, and pay my bills. As much as I'd like to draw all day, I can't support myself with art alone, at least not yet!

That being said, my goal is, and always has been to find a way to support myself full time by creating the comics and illustrations I love, and sharing them all with all of you! Your support and kind words means the world to me, and every day, I get a little bit closer to being able to create full time for you!

At work, I have a lot of time to think and plan about what how I can sustainably create my art full time, and I'd like to be fully transparent with all of you about my plans and goals moving forward!

My current income as a laser cnc operator is $3400 (CAD) per month which is enough to keep my bills paid, and keep a little for an emergency fund or savings. My essential bills come out to approximately $2200 (CAD) per month. I'm very fortunate to live in a cheap, small city, where housing isn't as crazy as most places.

With this baseline, I could go full time on my art if I were able to earn $2500 (CAD) per month. Right now, I earn about $600 (CAD) per month from patreon. This leaves $1900 dollars I'll need to earn from other sources, such as commissions if I want to go fulltime!

While I'm still working at my steel cutting job, I have very limited time to create comics, each page can take roughly 36 hours of drawing, coloring and shading! In order to keep up with 1 page a week, I have to spend nearly every hour of my days off drawing! I love doing it, but it leaves me very little time to get groceries, clean the house, and rest up for my week of 12 hour shifts.

To strike a better balance, I will be reducing my goal for page output to 2 per month, or every other week. I will also be prioritizing commissions to help make up the gap between my patreon earnings, and my goal income to go fulltime! I've already started a commiss.io page to streamline and formalize my pricing and include all the details for my commissions! (Coming soon) I'd love to bring your ideas to life! I'll share a link to my page once I've finished setting it up!

In the short term, this will mean less comic pages than I'd like... But in the long term, focusing more time on commissions will (hopefully) allow me to hit my full time goal and create even more comics than ever! Imagine how much more I could create if I could commit fulltime hours to just drawing!

To conclude this wall of text, I'd like to thank you all for being here, and supporting my art! When I first started drawing, I never dreamed of being able to share it all with so many fellow bigness enjoyers! It feels good to know that I'm not alone in my passion for big, round and full characters!

Thank you all, thank you so much!

I'll be back to my regular schedule by Monday, which is also my 4 day break! See you all then!